Carbon Trading Won't Save Aviation and Shipping

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Carbon Trading Won't Save Aviation and Shipping

Carbon trading schemes won't solve the aviation and shipping industries' problem of soaring carbon emissions, a British climate scientist says, and the cuts needed to address global climate change are so deep that both sectors must limit their growth.

"They can't trade their way out of this problem,” Bows told the 150 climate experts at the conference, according to the Guardian. “At current rates of growth, they will be consuming a significant proportion of the world's carbon budget by 2050. It will be way more than their fair share and an amount that simply can't be traded away."

Shipping and international aviation aren't included in the carbon trading program the EU has had in place since 2005, but they'll be forced to join in 2012. Every transportation company will be assigned an annual emissions ceiling. Those that exceed it must buy credits from a company that doesn't. Those that come in under the limit can sell the excess credits.

But Bows says there aren't enough credits to go around and the aviation and shipping industries must curtail their growth in the coming decades. That won't go over well in a global economy that depends on planes and ships to move people and cargo to the farthest reaches of the planet. The airline industry may be taking a beating these days, but passenger growth rates and aircraft emissions are expected to double by 2020 and 2030, respectively.

A United Nations study leaked earlier this year and published by the Guardian showed shipping-industry emissions are almost three times higher than previously thought and stand at 1.2 billion tons of CO2 annually. That's about 4.5 percent of the world's total output and the report warns the industry's output could rise 30 percent by 2020. The aviation industry generates about 650 million tons, the report found. Another study, by the U.S. Department of Transportation and others, found airline emissions could hit 1.5 billion tons annually by 2025. That's about half the amount currently produced by the entire 27-country EU. It's tough to see anyone having enough credits to trade for all that carbon dioxide.